8/14/2014 - Garage door install.

It's been three weeks since I ordered the garage door and installation day is here. I purchased the door from Yoders building supplies, a local favorite for many in the area. The two man team arrived around 10:30 am and got right to work. We had to push the trailer into the garage some to give them room work. The first 3 panels went into place without any issues. The guys weren't prepared for a steel building install but were making good time.

We opend the box for the window panel and found some cosmetic damage. It didn't stop us from installation but it will have to be re-ordered and a replacement installed later. After the 4th panel it was time to start using the scissor lift. The last 3 panels went up reasonably easy and then it was time to figure out how to engineer the rest of the track where the door will go when it's open.

Because the installers had never done a steel building before, the boss came out to help. I didn't get any pictures of the metal they installed to support the tracks but I'll do that this weekend. After all of the tracks were installed it was time for the opener. It is a LiftMaster meduim duty commercial opener. It has a chain drive to the door with a hoist chain for manual operation. Because of the height of the door we were lucky that they brought enough wire for the open/close/stop switch and the two sensors at the floor. We used every bit of what they had. I would have expected that due to the size and cost of the door that Yoders would have made sure that the installers had all of the right materials needed to do the job.

As we were testing the operation of the opener, I noticed that the lift cable on the left side was staying in front of the door until the panels were way past the upper curve. Because of the length of the door the cable spools wind the cable inward as the door raises. This was causing the cable to be narrower than the door when it was raised. We checked the door and found that it wasn't quite level which was causing the door to shift to the left slightly. It had been a long hard day for these guys and the door did operate, so I told them to come back tomorrow and we would reset the door level and go from there.

The door goes up and down and the opener is really quiet, probably quiter than the attached garage door.